[First Last Name]
Philosophy [Number]
[Date Month Year]
Research Question: What should be done about abortion?
Thesis Statement: Abortion is impermissible except when performed to save, not to take, life.
I. Abortion as a Utilitarianistic Act
Mothers who opted for abortion often base their decisions on factors that are favorable to them personally, making their utilitarianist philosophy essentially egoistic. Thus, a mother who opted to perform an abortion is essentially an egoistic utilitarianist.
Consequently, utilitarianism suffers from the problem of failing to respect the separateness of persons; that is, that of the mother and that of the unborn child (Jacobson 168). In effect, it gives total license to the powerful over the weak. It only respects the weak who has gained dominant power over others, which essentially contradicts the term ‘weak’. Thus, in the same way that it agrees on the morality of an abortion committed by the mother against the unborn child, it can agree on the morality of a matricidal offspring who murders his or her mother. In effect, the morality that utilitarianism can provide is a power-based morality, which can encourage a society that destroys, instead of a society that defends, the weak.
However, this does not necessarily mean that no sound moral reasoning can be expected from utilitarianism. Based on the works of John Stuart Mill, Jacobson (168) noted that agent impartiality is a partly definitive component of consequentialist utilitarianism. He observed that Mill’s consequentialist philosophy is primarily of the axiological impartiality type without being necessarily contradictive of deontologic impartiality.
Axiological impartiality holds that the happiness of all people, if they are equal in quantity and quality, is equally valuable. Thus, people should not be required to sacrifice their own lesser good to another’s greater good where no general rule has given the other, who is holding a greater good, a right to the sacrifice (169). If the pregnant mother and the unborn child has equal happiness in being alive, both in quantity and quality, the mother should not be required to sacrifice her good (i.e. happiness), whether it is lessor or greater, for the unborn child with the same equal quantity and quality of good without a general rule that will give the unborn child the right to the sacrifice. The same is true the other way around.
However, this impartiality does not mean causing harm to the other. Thus, the mother cannot be forced to sacrifice her good for the child. And yet, she is not also allowed to cause harm to the child as that will be disrespecting the equality of goods (i.e. happiness in being alive) between her and her child. Subsequently, aborting the child will be tantamount to causing harm to the child and disrespecting the child’s equality of goods with the mother’s goods. In effect, the consequentialist axiological impartiality provides a moral clarity of the utilitarianist philosophy.
Deontologic impartiality provides more stringent moral standards than axiological impartiality. It requires that the happiness of all people counts exactly the same way when evaluating acts of right and wrong (Jacobson 168). In this type of impartiality, the standard of right conduct is not that of the impartial spectator, whether or not the spectator has lesser or greater good, but that of all people concerned (169). Thus, unlike axiological impartiality, it even requires the spectator to make personal sacrifices of his own lesser or greater good for others’ greater good.
In effect, while classic utilitarianist thought provides a general permission for mothers to abort their children for egoistic reasons, the adoption of consequentialist thought with either axiological or deontologic impartiality will correct the egoistic utilitarianism of the abortive mother and persuade her to respect the equal or greater good that the unborn child, too, possesses in the same manner that the mother holds the same.
II. Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect
The act of abortion constitutes one of the most common application of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DD) (Capitaine, Devolder, and Penning 209). It sets four criteria to justify any action that has foreseeable harmful effects in relation to the achievement of a strongly desirable good effect. These criteria includes: (a) The act must be either not bad or wrong or at least morally neutral; (b) The actor intends the good effect and not the bad effect either as an end in itself or as a means to the good effect; (c) The circumstances of the action are sufficiently grave as to overweigh the bad effect while the actor exercises due diligence to minimize the harm (Glackin and Mills 78). A mother who cannot stomach killing her child will have second thoughts after learning of DDE and the circumstances that will lead her to directly kill her unborn child even in situations, which demand therapeutic abortion.
Glackin and Mills (76) defines abortion as the direct and intentional termination of a pregnancy, whether voluntary or therapeutic, and is considered immoral under the DDE criteria. Voluntary abortion essentially fails in the three DDE criteria. First, it is bad or wrong and not even morally neutral because of the directness of the action to take the life of the unborn child. Second, the mother intends a good effect (e.g. personal convenience under any definition) but achieves it through a bad effect (e.g. intentional death of the unborn child). Third, the circumstances of the abortion (e.g. maternal convenience of not carrying a child and caring for it) are not objectively grave enough (e.g. not a life-and-death choice) or can the harm be minimized because the primary intention is to bring maximum harm (i.e. take a life) to the unborn child.
Conversely, therapeutic abortion is no excuse to terminate a pregnancy with an intention of killing the unborn child. In ectopic pregnancy, for instance, the retention of the ectopically implanted zygote will inevitably threaten the life of the mother when its growth results to the eruption of the Fallopian tube and the consequent internal bleeding of the mother. In such a case, the DDE criteria does not recommend the termination of the pregnancy (e.g. removal of the ectopic zygote as it is tantamount to killing it) as the therapeutic procedure in protecting the life of the mother. Doing so will not satisfy the requirements of the criteria (a) and (b) even if it partly satisfies the criterion (c), which involves a grave circumstance (e.g. inevitable death of the mother). It partially fails criterion (c) because removal of the zygote, which kills it, does not constitute minimization of the harm as it results to maximum harm (i.e. killing the unborn child) instead. However, it allows any procedure that directly prevents the death of the mother without intentionally and directly killing the zygote. Such procedure may include the removal of the Fallopian tube (take note that there are two Fallopian tubes) even if that means indirectly removing with the Fallopian tube that contains the ectopically implanted zygote.
Works Cited
Capitaine, Laura, Katrien Devolder, and Guido Pennings. “Lifespan Extension and the Doctrine
of Double Effect.” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics Jun. 2013, 34 (3): 207-226. PDF file.
Glackin, Shane N. and Simon Mills. “Termination of Pregnancy, Article 40.3.3o, and the Law of
Intended Consequences.” Irish Journal of Legal Studies 2013, 3 (3): 76-91. PDF file.
Jacobson, Daniel. “Utilitarianism without Consequentialism: The Case of John Stuart Mill.”
Philosophical Review 2008, 117 (2): 159-191. PDF file.
